About Kevan

What does she do?

She looks at art-

"I am always visually hungry; I absorb art books, art and fine craft shows, and museums whenever I can. I am fascinated by design, materials, techniques and process. My greatest joy comes from creative and visual problem solving."

She makes art-

Kevan is available to individuals, interior designers, architects and art consultants to create site specific commissions in fabric, thread and paint.

Whether it is called an art quilt, fiber art, textile art, cloth art, contemporary fiber art, fabric collage, or paintings in fabric, she can create it to work with your fabrics and your interior.

She curates art-

Since 2006 she has been the gallery director for the Art Gallery at The Academy of Music, Spotswood, NJ.

She shows art-

Her own work has been shown mostly in the Northeast with the group of fiber artists known as Fiber Revolution. She also curates shows for this group.

Most recently her fiber art has been displayed at:
     South African Quilt Festival, Botswanacraft, Nov 2008
     Indiana State University Gallery, Terre Haute, IN (show title "Bloodline"),
          Sept 2008
     The Kinsey Institute, Bloomington, IN, April - Sept 2008
     Museum of the American Quilter's Society, Nov 2007- Jan 2008
     Belskie Gallery of Art and Science, Sept 2007 (Curated)
     Saugatuck Center for the Arts, Saugatuck, MI, Sept - Dec 2007
     Long Beach Island Foundation for the Arts, August 2007
     The Embroiderers Guild of America, M. Parshall Gallery, June - Aug 2007
     Somerset Arts Association, Bedminster, NJ, April - May 2007 (Curated)
     Arts Guild of Rahway, Rahway, NJ, Jan 2007 (Curated)
     Gallery at the Academy of Music, Spotswood, NJ, Jan - March 2007
          (Curated)
     Georgian Court College, Lakewood, NJ, Oct 2006
     Renaissance Center for the Arts, Millville, NJ, Aug 2006
     Slater Memorial Museum, Norwich, CT, September - June - Aug 2006
     Johnson and Johnson World Headquarters, New Brunswick, NJ, March 2006
          (Curated)
     Quilters Heritage Celebration, Lancaster, PA, April 2006
     New England Quilt Museum Lowell, MA, Nov 2005 - Jan 2006

She teaches art-

Kevan loves to teach creativity and composition to fabric artists. She has taught adult education classes at high schools and vocational schools and at the Somerset Arts Center in Bedminster, NJ.

She lectures on-

1. Her self-portrait series,
2. A collection of her work; the process of their creation with stories that delight and touch the soft spots in all of us.
3. What is an art quilt, with slides and discussion about emotion in art and how successful composition grabs our attention.

How did she start?

Kevan Rupp Lunney began her fascination with textiles while taking naps under her grandmother's pastel, depression era quilts. She began sewing on her new Singer machine at age 9, while living in Ohio inspired by her grandmother's, mother's and her sister's skills. By high school she made all of her own clothes, and began to experiment with tailoring and patternmaking. She studied Fine Art at Otterbein College, and then transferred to the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City to study fashion design. After a career in New York City designing sleepwear, she designed hand-painted silk lingerie under her own label, Serenity.

Marriage and two children provided opportunities to start quilting as a hobby. She made numerous baby quilts, ribbon winning guild and county fair quilts and quilts with her children's schools. She is very proud of her 2003 Library Quilt Project which produced eleven quilts with 300 children in her town, all of which hang permanently at the library in East Brunswick, NJ.

Now, Lunney considers making art with fabric, "a medium which allows tremendous freedom of expression, and continues to be challenging with the breadth of possible techniques from painting, printing and dyeing to computer generated imaging on cloth." Lunney's newest work reflects a painterly approach with vibrant color, raw edges, and details drawn with stitched thread.